Category Archives: Current Events

Progressive Policies and Climate Change

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This Changes EverythingOn this blog we have tried to understand global warming and resulting climate change, and the social and scientific factors that affect the topic. But as interesting as the science is – and trying to understand the entire Earth as a single system is fascinating – there would be no public interest if not for the economic and ideological implications.

I have looked for a book that addresses the progressive view of climate policy. In This Changes Everything – Capitalism vs. The Climate, Naomi Klein clearly believes that global warming is real, predominately caused by humans, and an impending global crisis. She says we deny or ignore the issue “because we fear that letting in the reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.”

I think I’ve found my progressive tome.

Klein immediately draws the ideological battle lines, featuring the Heartland Institute as the capitalist position, whose scientists are “so steeped in fossil fuel dollars that you can practically smell the fumes.” But “deniers” are not just American. Klein notes that Canada, the UK, Western Europe, and Australia also have strong denier activists. Heartland stands in for many ring-wing think-tanks that were created to defend capitalism against socialism and “aggressive Keynesianism” in the 1960s and 1970s.

She notes that “climate change could become a catalyzing force for positive change… the best argument progressives have ever had…” This articulates the belief of many that global warming is just the latest excuse to do what progressives always want to do – block free-trade, undermine corporations, invest in public projects, open borders, and (as Klein states) “take back ownership of essential services like energy and water,” to “leave us with both a more habitable climate… and a far more just economy than the one we have right now.” Klein even uses the hot-button phrase “wealth redistribution”. If global warming is indeed threatening civilization, “climate change can be the force – the grand push – that will bring together all of these… movements.” Continue reading →

Explanation for how the Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) Became Law

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Charles Krauthammer wrote an editorial describing how recently released videos of MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, an architect of Obamacare, describing how Obamacare was written deceptively to allow it to become law. Gruber explained, “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Basically call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass. Gruber also explained that the authors of the bill realized they had to manipulate the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that is responsible for issuing cost estimates on any legislative proposal. “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CDO did not score the mandate as taxes. If the CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.” The President even insisted in his speeches in favor of the law that what must be paid to the government if you fail to buy health insurance was not a tax. We all know that the Supreme Court declared the law constitutional because it was a tax.

There were numerous broken promises. One that was repeated on numerous occasions by the President was that “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Period. If you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance. Period. Then people learned their doctors often weren’t included in the government-approved coverage. People who had shopped for tailored health insurance were told they could not keep their insurance because it was substandard. Thus a fifty year old woman with no children remaining at home was told her insurance did not meet government standards because it did not include maternity benefits or pediatric dental coverage. Continue reading →

Voter Turnout for 2014 Midterm Elections

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The Denver Post published an editorial declaring that the “…test of the state’s all-mail ballot and vote center system…” was a success because 2 million votes were cast compared to 1.8 million for the 2010 midterm election. The sad fact is that the Post was bragging about a 53% voter participation despite the ease of voting by mail.

Colorado voters were significantly more engaged that the nation as a whole. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that just 36.4% of eligible voters in the nation cast votes, which was the lowest turnout since 1942. There were seven states with turnout less than 30%. The worst result was in Indiana at 28%. Even the Kansas Senate race that was given nationwide attention only had turnout of a bit less than 43%.

Another scary statistic is that the nationwide campaigns were estimated to have cost $3.67 billion. I know that there was a constant barrage of television ads for the Colorado Senate election. That one campaign had a total cost of 97 million dollars, which equates to about $50 for each vote that was cast. I will admit that the ads toward the end of the campaigning did sometimes count as entertainment. I particularly liked the one portraying a couple desperately searching for a place to buy condoms because Senatorial candidate Cory Gardner had outlawed them as part of his quest to prohibit all forms of birth control.

There have been all manner of suggestions on how to get more voters to participate. Both political parties have spent huge amounts of time and money on their get out the vote efforts. Perhaps they should think about political ads that are less insulting.

New French Fries Won’t Cause As Much Cancer As Before

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Mr-potato.svgGMOs (genetically modified organisms) are back in the news with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recent approval of Simplot’s new potato – the Innate. Simplot has inserted additional fragments of the potato’s own DNA – nothing from bacteria or other organisms. You’d think this would reduce the “ick factor” that bedevils other GMOs. The new potato offers advantages to the consumer, not just to farmers and seed companies, so perhaps it has a better chance of being accepted that other GMOs.

Simplot began selling precut frozen French fries and hashbrowns to fast-food chains back in the 1950s, but they want to create a new consumer product: the fresh pre-cut potato. Unlike most potatoes that turn brown quickly, the Innate stays fresh and white much longer. Whether consumers will embrace this new convenience, and pay a bit more for it, will determine if Innate succeeds.

Another happy outcome is that Innate produces less acrylamide. Acrylamide has been shown to increase the risk of cancer in lab rats and mice, but studies in humans so far have not shown a clear increase in cancer risk in humans. One of Simplot’s biggest customers will not take advantage of the change:

“‘McDonald’s USA does not source GMO potatoes, nor do we have current plans to change our sourcing practice,’ a company spokesperson” said.

The Mother Jones article rings true:

“When you think about it, that cautious attitude makes perfect sense. McDonald’s has been beset by declining sales and questions about the quality of its food. Its customers don’t care about the Innate’s anti-browning quality because they buy their fries cooked. The only potential sales pitch would involve the lower dose of acrylamides. But saying ‘Our new fries might be less carcinogenic than the ones we’ve been selling you for 50 years’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it.”

I also ran across some commercial information on a website supported, in part, by the European Union. Innate isn’t mentioned, but French fries are not the potato’s biggest market:

“Only one in four potatoes grown in Europe actually gets eaten by people. Almost half end up being fed to livestock. The remaining one quarter are used as raw material in the production of alcohol and starch.”

It seems “sticky starch” is used as paste, glue, or lubricant. Currently, the different forms of starch found in a potato must be separated, so plant breeders are working to develop potatoes that produce only one type. More GMO potatoes are doubtless on their way.

Reducing a chemical (a natural chemical found in all potatoes) that may-or-may-not cause cancer seems like a small gain. And, personally, I don’t find cutting my own potatoes a big imposition. But on this blog, we’ve offered cautious support for GMOs and I don’t see Innate as changing that position. We’ll keep watching.

Read more on GMOs here:

GMO labeling 2

GMO labeling 1

GMOs Food Safety and Golden Rice

GMOs Science and Morality

GMOs vs Hybrids

Slavery in America: The Half Has Never Been Told

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half has never been toldEdward E. Baptist has written a book about slavery in America. It may seem surprising, but despite being much-studied, slavery and the Civil War that ended it are still controversial.

Baptist wants to present the “beating heart” of slavery. He uses many sources. Notarized sales records and “certificates of character” provided a lot of data on slaves. During the Great Depression, WPA historians were paid to collect personal histories from freed slaves. Baptist “draws on thousands of personal narratives” and often uses evocative language. Slaves as a group were “this trussed-up giant, stretched out on the rack of America’s torture zone;” a particular slave who “survived six weeks of marching in shackles… was thin, made of knots of starved, scarred muscle, draped in rags.”

Baptist states that Americans have a “sanitized” understanding of slavery and the Civil War that “insist[s] that the purpose of the war had been to defend [the South’s] political rights against an oppressive state… that slavery had been benign and that ‘states rights’ had been the cause of the Civil War.” Baptist writes that the “enslavers” insistence on extending slavery into the American West,” where they “pushed too hard,” was the final straw so that, “at last, whites came to take up arms against each other.”

Through the 1800s a profession of entrepreneurial slave traders came to dominate over small, local slave-trading. Slaves were taken farther away from their homes and families than ever before. The price of slaves tracked the price of cotton, and cotton production was increased through torture, especially whipping. Slavery was not dwindling away on its own, as some of the Founding Fathers had hoped and predicted. It was an important part of America’s economy. Cotton was vital to the industrial revolution and slavery helped America become an economic power. Continue reading →

Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change Report

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report from Copenhagen, Denmark that said, in summary, “Climate change is happening, it’s almost entirely man’s fault and limiting its impacts may require reducing greenhouse gas emission to zero this century…” (I’m assuming they don’t intend to reduce the amounts of carbon dioxide exhaled by humans and other animals.)

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “Science has spoken. There is no ambiguity in their message. Leaders must act. Time is not on our side.”  The report once again mentions the “…melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice…”

I’ve expressed my opinions on this subject many times, and I still consider myself a denier, as the global warming advocates enjoy calling people who don’t agree with them. I still think the earth may warm, or it may cool, but it is certain the climate will change just as it always has.

I intend to focus on Antarctic and Arctic ice levels posted on the National Sea and Ice Data Center web site. Recent peak levels in the Antarctic set a new record over the period of satellite observations. Global warming fans say that isn’t important. I reason, perhaps naively, that warmer temperatures probably would result in less ice and not more. Continue reading →